Lucy Battersby

Victorian government departments are failing to keep strict controls on phone expenses, including recouping the cost of personal use of mobiles, according to a report from the state Auditor-General.

The report on three Victorian agencies that spend a combined $13 million on fixed and mobile phones every year found that while two of the three saved hundreds of thousands of dollars adjusting mobile phone accounts, none had proper processes to recoup costs for excessive personal use.

Staff at the Department of Human Services collectively spent $72,000 more than was expected for normal "business usage" over a six-month period, but the department failed to investigate if this was due to personal use.

At the Justice Department staff must declare personal usage over $20, but while this increased 239 per cent between July 2012 and August 2013 reimbursement levels declined 14 per cent.

The state's Auditor-General recommends all public sector agencies verify every fixed and mobile invoice, cancel unused services and enforce compliance on personal usage.

"My audit has found encouraging examples of good practice at each examined agency that have produced useful savings. However, at an organisational level none of the agencies had sufficient controls, nor regularly monitored and reported to executive management on telecommunications usage and expenditure," Auditor-General John Doyle wrote in the report, which was released this week.

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Victoria Police saved $640,000 by consolidating data usage across the organisation onto one account, and the DHS saved $245,000 annually by switching all its staff to the lowest data plan available and consolidating plans.

The biggest concern was the Department of Justice, where expenditure on mobile voice and data services increased nearly 80 per cent since mid-2007 and spending on fixed voice services increased more than 40 per cent in the same period.

"There is little evidence to demonstrate DOJ is effectively managing its mobile use and expenditure consistently across the organisation," the report said.

"It does not do any invoice accuracy checks for mobile call rates and instead relies solely on Department of State Development, Business and Innovation's checking, which ... is limited and not intended to assure the accuracy of individual agency invoices."

The audit found the Department of Justice did not have processes in place to reduce unused landlines and extensions. In 2012 one section in the department found it was paying for 93 fixed voice extensions that it was not using, including 35 that were redundant, according to the report.

And when the department first issued smartphones to its staff, it signed plans giving all users 4.5 gigabytes per month, a very large amount of data, when staff only used a couple of hundred megabytes during the first five months of the trial.

"If DOJ had more actively monitored usage during this period and placed users initially onto the lower cost plan, the department could have saved $24,000," the report found.

Victoria Police, the DHS and the Department of Justice were audited because they spent the most on telecommunications in 2011-12; $6 million for the police and $3.5 million for the other two departments.

All three agencies use Telstra for mobile services, and Victoria Police uses Telstra for fixed voice services through a "supplementary tender". The DHS and Justice use Optus for fixed voice and NED for telephone equipment.

The Victorian government spent a total of $53 million on telecommunications in 2011-12, up from about $43 million in 2007-08. The increase comes from mobile services, which have grown from $14 million to $23.5 million in the same period.